1693. Congreve, Old Batchelor, Act I., sc. iv. It is oftentimes too late with some of you young, termagant, flashy sinners.
1719. Durfey, Pills, etc., ii., 12. A flashy town beau.
1748. T. Dyche, Dictionary, (5th ed.) Flashy (a), vain, bragging, boasting, foolish, empty; also anything waterish and unsavoury.
1755. The World, No. 149. Whose melodious voices give every syllable (not of a lean and flashy, but of a fat and plump song) its just emphasis.
1830. Lytton, Paul Clifford, p. 13, (ed. 1854). Vy it be … the gemman vot payed you so flashly.
1857. Song in Ducange Anglicus, The Vulgar Tongue, p. 42. Your fogle you must flashly tie.
1863. Speke, Journal of the Discovery of the Nile, p. 154. Flashily dressed in coloured cloths and a turban, he sat down in one of our chairs.
1864. Braddon, Henry Dunbar, ch. v. But he evinced no bad taste in the selection of a costume. He chose no gaudy colours, or flashily cut vestments.
1873. Cassell’s Magazine, Jan., p. 246, col. 2. They are rather prone to dress flashily, and wear, when in full fig, no end of jewellery.
1874. Mortimer Collins, Frances, ch. xvii. That wild set of people Captain Heath picked up with—members of Parliament and flashy young women—all driving four horses, I don’t know where.